I have spiceworks set up on a machine running server 2003. All windows XP machines are picked up perfectly in the inventory when i run a scan, but the Windows 7 machines say "No open ports for this device were found to be responding."

The machine they i am working with has no AV protection on it at the moment and the windows firewall is turned off along with UAC being disabled.

When I am on the machine that spiceworks in running on and i run the wmic /user:USER_NAME /password:PASSWORD /node:IP_ADDRESS sustemenclouser get serialnumber i get

From what I've seen on my Windows 7 machines, an Access is Denied error has meant that the scan account is not set up as a local admin on the target machine. Unless there is something not configured correctly with WMI or DCOM.

You mentioned this machine is joined to the domain. Any chance this could be picking up settings from an existing GPO which would, in effect, block WMI access for Windows 7 but not XP?

I just have this feeling that there is another piece of information missing from this situation, which is making diagnosis more difficult.

If the scan works on one Windows 7 machine but not another, what is the difference in configuration? It seems to me that something is setup differently on the one that scans than the one that doesn't. It should not matter that one is Dell and the other is HP if they are both Windows 7 OSes. Are they also the same version of Windows 7 OS?

yes both are the same version of windows 7 with the same update. I have the exact same software installed on both but for some reason the HP wont let me scan it. In the inventory i get the error No Open Ports for This device... and i have gone through every step in this article...

WMI might be failing due to DCOM being configured in a manner that doesn't allow remote applications to run (namely the WMI application). You must have DCOM configued (on the remote computer that is being accessed) to allow remote launch and remote activation. Type this in a command window:

c:> dcomcnfg.exe

Then:

Click Component Services

Click Computers

Right-click My Computer

Properties

Click on the Default Properties tab

Check "Enable Distributed COM on this computer"

Default Authentication Level: Connect

Default Impersonation Level: Identify

Next:

Click on COM Security tab

Click Edit Limits under "Launch and Acitvate Permissions"

Make sure Remote Launch and Activation permissions are enabled for the Username you are using

Verify that the username (and group) you are using to access the remote machine have both local and remote (activation and launch) capabilities enabled (all 4 boxes should be checked). If DCOM is what is causing the problem, you will typically get an "Authentication Error" from the WMIC command above. If you are getting an "RPC Server Unavailable" error, it is likely that a firewall is blocking access completely (see below) **Restart computer for changes to take effect**.

So when you open up dcomcnfg and navigate down to the COM Security Tab, for each of the two permissions have you added the same authentication account Spiceworks uses to scan, with all the allow check boxes selected? The same permissions should be there for the local administrators group? That doubles up the permissions, but it might be good to add the scan account in specifically in this case.

Did you also try running wmimgmt /verifyrepository from an elevated command prompt?